Hi, just wanted to post a few comments and questions. 6 months ago, my doctor diagnosed me with add. I believe its type 2 , lack of motivatioin, concentration, no drive, low mood, just basic lack of joy in daily living. So he stared me on adderall 10mg 2x daily.
Then i was upped to 20mg 2x day 2 months after and began to notice great results. I was more social, felt a mood increase, i was able to do work for hours and read etc. I was more motivated and got back that zest for life feeling. (note i tried almost every antidepressent with low or no results) . I now believe there is a problem with my dopamine system, not seratonin. Well from what i read, adderall or psyhostimulants, and cocaine, meth, release dopamine from the nucleaus accumbens which is your brain reward center.
Im now up to 30mg 2x daily. 30mg works fine, but it wears off in 4-5 hrs. So taking it 2x daily, i come up short by 8pm. I cant take another dose, or ill be short. So i ask if adding say a small dose of another stimulant either with a lower dose(say 15mg of adderal + the stimulant), or just take 30mg 2x daily and when i feel the 2nd dose wearing , take a stiimulant.
I dont know of any way to extend the dose, and my PERSCRIPTION PLAN WONT pay for the XR version. Im looking into ephedrine or another kind of stimulant, or maybe a noortropic like pregoline or something in that nature.

Anyone have this problem of adderall wearing off and then being shorted. NOw i can ask my doc to maybe add an extra dose , but i dont want to move up so quickly and him thinking, i may be abusing it.

Some alternatives would be taking 15mg of adderall 3 x daily, with a small dose of ephedrine. Ephedrine is the closest supplement and most potend stimulant i know of that still can be bought online. I do have 90 25mg pills , but i would cut the dose to 12.5 mg. I also am perscribed Klonopin 1mg 3x daily , i even lowered my dose to .5mg 3x daily and still the adderall wore off , but if i get too anxious from adderall+ephedra, i can just up the dose of Klonopin. Ya its getting techinical now.

I don't recommend adding a stimulant. First of all because you don't know how that is going to react with what is already in your system, and I have read that you are supposed to watch your caffeine and other stimulants while taking adderall. Secondly, ephedra and caffeine are probably not going to have anywhere near the same effect as adderall; they most likely will not help you focus, so you would just be getting all the negatives of taking them in addition to the amphetamines (increased heart rate, blood pressure, etc).

Unfortunately, it just sounds like you are building up a tolerance to the adderall, like you suspected, and adding another stimulant is not going to fix that. The next time you see your psychiatrist, ask him/her to switch you to 20mg 3x daily instead of 30mg 2x daily, that way you can take 3 doses to cover the whole day instead of 2.

I have developed the same tolerance problem, and it seems to be very common unfortunately. I also started off at 20mg/day, and am now up to 60mg/day like you. But even 60mg/day is not working well for me. It's not a problem of it wearing off too soon so much as it is just not as effective anymore - I am having so much trouble concentrating. Anyway, why I'm telling you this is that the same might happen to you, and you could just keep building tolerance. So if you are finding that in a while 60mg is not working anymore, maybe you could talk to your doc about switching meds. That's what I'm thinking of doing.

But I really think you should not take any ephedra, or whatever else you were planning on taking.

Please listen to Wasted.
I am on a search for as much information on avoiding tolerance too.

A piece of advice that I'd like to relay on, from an experienced user of this drug (not me) is to make sure that you're not thinking that you're hitting tolerance because the initial feelings of happiness or euphoria are waning. Try and ask yourself whether it's actually and specifically your ability to think and focus that are suffering.

Sure, it's nice at first to be able to concentrate and feel 'good' at the same time - but ultimately for many of us, myself and I think Wasted too -- we're only taking this medication to help us to focus and think.

ok, well you probably hit it on the nose. I slept for 1 hr, researching all night, not all about adderall but basically adderall if i take it late, allows me to stay up late as i want. I dont work today so, i dont mind it, but if i dont get a nap today by tonight ill be a zombie, unless i keep popping adderall and that is a tale sign of abuse.
Anyway, iv been reading alot about how alot of people get a tolerance, some within a week, up to a few months. For me, it was like 1 month. Now there are ways to combat this, taking NMDA antagonist, for one L-Theanine a natural herb which i have, to stop this NDMA receptor from interacting with gluamic acid and downregulating amphetamine tolerance. DONT ask me how i found that. WOW. anyway, another post from a guy who was really knowlegable in Psychostimulants, he must have 100 posts on psychobable, tells all about his dexadrine, adderall, ritalin experience. Toerance does build up and taking a stumulant break weekend, or at least 2 days, almost replenishes your receptors back to 100 percent, Ya in that short of time, but if i stop my adderall, for 2 days ill be laying in bed depressed, sleeping, and just useless. So, i do have ritalin. 30mg tabs of 20 tabs. I may switch over to ritalin say in a few days, even though ritalin is very similar, its not an amphetamine, so i may benifite from the break while on ritalin, then switch back to adderall a few days or how long after. JUst stopping 60-90mg of adderall, i know im in for it. This happened to me for 4 days , i ran out of adderall, and i swear i slept for 3 days staight, my father thought i was doing oxycontins again, and sick, so i cant do that.
Drinking caffiene is out. Not strong enought and ephedrine i just read depletes dopamine in just a few days, and causes the most anxiety least add releive.
But am i addicted. Well i have this analogy. I was addicted to oxycontin for 10 months. I got up to 6 40's a day. When i stopped i felt like dying. I abused those, snorted them, and i got high high. With adderall, its more mental, and even though i could feel it after 6 hrs, im not sick like oxys. Nor do i crave it, but it seems its like i must have it so i could do work , have mental clarity, motivation, not a high ephoric go out and party type high.

So, if at worst i may becoming pychological addicted and even this expert stated about he had a run with adderall/ritalin combo addiction, when he stopped, for 2 days he slept up to 1 week he was depressed.

So, it leaves me with no choice but to just try to switch off over to ritalin. If i take 2 per day i can at least take 10 days off. And from what i also read, ritalin and amphetamines actually do two different things. Ritalin is like an SSRI of dopamine. It blocks the ruptake. Amphetamines, flood the synapse with dopamine. OH also Norepinephrine. SO its not like switching from adderall to dexedrine where there really similar. But there is no other way but to stop cold and that wont do me good,unless i plan on hybernating in my bed

I aslo have desipramine, which is enough for 18 days and used for stimulants withdrawls:

so its either switch to ritalin 30mg 2x daily for 5-10 days or
start desipramine, which may help a little but it has no dopamine properties so i know ill feel a quite amout of withdrawls. Or just keep taking my dose untill i see my doc and have him titrate it, or have em switch me to dexadrine spanules which last 11 hrs.

N-Acetyl Cysteine is a widely available nutritional supplement, one of my favorites. It is used medically to treat Tylenol poisoning. It is an excellent anti-oxidant, and is particularly effective at scavenging aldehydes, like acetaldehyde from alcohol. It increases levels of glutatione, one of the bodies primary anti-oxidants.

This increase in glutathione increases neurotransmitter binding ability, thus improving the effectiveness of existing neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. It has been shown to be highly effective in Parkinson's disease, a dopamine deficiency state. Again, it doesn't increase dopamine per se, it improves receptor sensitivity.

Now, there is another reason to take it as evidenced by the below studies.

1: Brain Res. 2004 Jul 30;1016(1):90-95.

Effect of antioxidant N-acetyl-l-cysteine on behavioral changes and neurotoxicity in rats after administration of methamphetamine.

Several lines of evidence suggest that oxidative stress may play a role in the behavioral changes and neurotoxicity in rats after administration of methamphetamine (MAP). N-acetyl-l-cysteine (NAC) is a precursor of glutathione, and it also exerts as an antioxidant. In this study, we investigated the effects of NAC on the behavioral changes (hyperlocomotion and development of sensitization) and neurotoxicity in male Wistar rats after administration of MAP. Pretreatment with NAC (30, 100 or 300 mg/kg, i.p.) attenuated significantly hyperlocomotion in rats induced by a single administration of MAP (2 mg/kg, i.p.), in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, pretreatment with NAC (100 mg/kg, i.p., 15 min before MAP injection, once daily for 5 consecutive days) blocked significantly the development of behavioral sensitization in rats after repeated administration of MAP (2 mg/kg, once daily for 5 consecutive days), whereas the behaviors in rats after repeated administration of NAC plus saline groups were not different from those of control (vehicle plus saline) groups. One week after administration of MAP (7.5 mg/kgx4, 2-h intervals), levels of dopamine (DA) in rat striatum were significantly decreased as compared with control groups. Pretreatment with NAC (1, 3, 10 or 30 mg/kg, i.p., 30 min before each MAP injection) attenuated significantly the MAP-induced reduction of DA in rat striatum, in a dose-dependent manner. These results suggest that NAC could prevent the behavioral changes (acute hyperlocomotion and development of behavioral sensitization) in rats and neurotoxicity in rat striatum after administration of MAP, and that NAC would be a useful drug for treatment of several symptoms associated with MAP abuse.

1Department of Psychiatry, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba, Japan.

Several lines of evidence suggest that oxidative stress might contribute to neurotoxicity in the dopaminergic nerve terminals after administration of methamphetamine (MAP). We undertook the present study to determine whether intravenous administration of N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC), a potent antioxidant drug, could attenuate the reduction of dopamine transporter (DAT) in the striatum of monkey brain after administration of MAP. Positron emission tomography studies demonstrated that repeated administration of MAP (2 mg/kg as a salt, four times at 2-h intervals) significantly decreased the accumulation of radioactivity in the striatum after intravenous administration of [(11)C]beta-CFT. In contrast, the binding of [(11)C]SCH 23390 to dopamine D(1) receptors in the monkey striatum was not altered after the administration of MAP. A bolus injection of NAC (150 mg/kg, i.v.) 30 min before MAP administration and a subsequent continuous infusion of NAC (12 mg/kg/h, i.v.) over 8.5 h significantly attenuated the reduction of DAT in the monkey striatum 3 weeks after the administration of MAP. These results suggest that NAC could attenuate the reduction of DAT in the monkey striatum after repeated administration of MAP. Therefore, it is likely that NAC would be a suitable drug for treatment of neurotoxicity in dopaminergic nerve terminals related to chronic use of MAP in humans.Neuropsychopharmacology advance online publication, 16 June 2004; doi:10.1038/sj.npp.1300512

PMID: 15199373

One more thing, NMDA antagonists that are strong enough to prevent tolerance, which is actually sensitization, will impair your thinking and memory.

I've been on Aderall XR 30mg bid for just over a month now.Because it wasn't working well enough, as well as giving me lightheaded/dizziness around lunch time, I now take them both in the A.M.and it works much better.

The problem is that it wears off around 1pm and I struggle the rest of the work day. The extended release finally kicks in around 4pm, which isn't helping me at work.

I've asked my doc for some help and I'm hoping to hear back from him this week.

Keep in mind that with Adderall XR 30mg, 15 mg kicks in right away and the rest is gradually released throughout the rest of the day. It was described to me as "cascading," as opposed to "kicking in." I need it to kick in better.

my problem is distraction.i can cook,clean and be calm now!which is a blessing.ive had it upped 2 times and each time i was on fire!nothing distracted me,i was doing a job and doing it well.After a few days I have no focus again

I take Adderall. I still feel it working, so I don't think my tolerance is fading. However, an important thing to keep in mind is to always get enough sleep at night. If you only get in 3-4 hours of sleep, the Adderall won't be very effective the next day.